How do you intend to reach your first ten customers?

This was a question asked by the organizers of a business session of which I was the chair of the sales panel.

Lot's of interesting answers were given to the question, but my favourite responses went something like this...

"I intend to get my first XYZ customers through social media and referrals"

I like this answer not because it's the best answer to give, but because it betrays a poor understanding of how these things work. This way we can quickly give them the right idea of how things work in the real world.

Wrestling with these assumptions early makes the journey more pleasant in the future.

Let's start with social media.

You CAN get your first set of customers with social media, but those customers aren't going to come IMMEDIATELY YOU OPEN UP YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES.

Getting sales through social media requires a number of things.

Old school marketers say that social media or any marketing strategy requires AIDA (attention, interest, desire, and action).

First you have to create some awareness in the market. Then you need to find a way to spark interest. After that you have to put out content that sparks a desire, then you have to figure out a way to get them to take action which ends with them placing an order.

This whole process isn't going to happen overnight.

If you get into business today, are you sure you're capitalized enough or you have enough in savings to wait it out until you can create AIDA?

Other folks say that getting sales through social media requires that you have built up some CREDIBILITY in the market place.

Building credibility doesn't happen overnight.

If you want to bake wedding cakes or doughnuts for child day care centres, part of building credibility will involve posting pictures of cakes and pastries you have baked before.

That means you must have gotten some prior sales through another method to begin with, or you’ve spent time experimenting and doing some free work.

Do you have enough in savings to keep paying the bills until your credibility starts bringing in the orders?

Social media is a wonderful tool to bring in customers so long as you have the right expectations.

Social media for sales is a medium to a long term sales strategy. Social media isn’t for bringing in sales today. Social media activities today are meant to bring in sales sometime in the future.

If social media is going to be pivotal to your sales strategy, that's fine... but you need to look for something else that'll bring in the initial sales and customers today.

If you do it this way, then you won’t have to exhaust your savings or your business capital prematurely.

What about referrals as a means of getting your first ten customers?

We'll tackle that tomorrow!